


the secret is still my own, and my love for you is still unknown

by gilligankane



Series: you can tell everybody this is your song [45]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:34:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24463585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: "But Iknowyou want a girlfriend.”“How do you know that?” Nicole takes a deep breath and tries again. “I haven’t said I want a girlfriend,” she reminds Waverly.“Everyone wants a girlfriend.” Waverly pauses and looks back down at the magazine she’s holding. “Well, except, like, Wynonna. And-and me, of course.”
Relationships: Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught
Series: you can tell everybody this is your song [45]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/819408
Comments: 25
Kudos: 310





	the secret is still my own, and my love for you is still unknown

**Author's Note:**

> This is in response to the wonderful donations people made to the Minneapolis Freedom Fund. I really appreciate it.
> 
> This takes place in the summer of 1988, just before the main fic, [it's like i wrote every note with my own fingers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11948871). Waverly wants to know who Nicole's perfect woman is. Nicole just wants to get through the summer.

**“Alone” Heart, 1987  
** _You don't know how long I have wanted to touch your lips and hold you tight, oh. You don't know how long I have waited, and I was going to tell you tonight. But the secret is still my own, and my love for you is still unknown - alone._

Nicole leans back in the lawn chair Waverly pulled out for her and takes a long sip from the can of Orange Crush sweating in her hand. Her hat sits backward on her head. Heart’s _Bad Animal_ is in her Hitachi. Her Snapper mower is resting in the freshly cut grass, cooling down from the twenty minutes she spent pushing it through the high grass of Gus’s lawn. It’s growing so fast this summer that she almost can’t keep up with it.

 _But I can_ , she thinks. _And I will._

Waverly kicks her lightly in the shin, getting her attention. “Did you hear me?”

“No,” Nicole admits. “I was just thinking that I’m going to have to start mowing twice a week.”

“Twice a week?” Waverly sighs. “So, basically, between your lawns and the Patch, I’m never going to see you.”

Nicole lifts an eyebrow slowly. “I see you all the time. You come with me when I mow. I spend all of your shift sitting at the counter.”

“That’s _different_ ,” Waverly says quickly. “That’s not hanging out. I’m working.”

“If you can call that working,” Nicole mumbles. When Waverly glares at her, Nicole smiles. “Of course, dear.”

“Barf-o-rama,” Wynonna says loudly. She’s dragging a lawn chair across the driveway, and Nicole shifts forward and winces at the sound the aluminum makes against the asphalt. Wynonna doesn’t seem to mind. She pulls it until she’s close enough that Nicole can smell Doc’s aftershave. It tickles her nose. She almost sneezes.

Wynonna sits down and her chair tips to one side. Nicole immediately reaches out a hand to steady her, but Wynonna stops herself from falling over, one hand still holding her Cherry 7 Up. She pushes her hair out of her face and shoves her can of soda into her shirt, hissing when it touches her skin.

Nicole stares at her.

“What?” Wynonna shifts the can around. “It’s hot as hell out here.”

“So go inside,” Waverly says. “You’re going to distract Nicole.”

Wynonna rolls her eyes. “Uh, _you_ distract Nicole.” 

Nicole feels her throat tighten. Wynonna isn’t wrong. It’s distracting to have Waverly sitting on the lawn in her chair and that bathing suit top and her shorts that seem like they don’t cover anything at all. She’s not running anything over anymore, but she still has to edge around Gus’s flowerbeds carefully just in case Waverly decides she wants to stand up and stretch. But no one knows that. Definitely not Wynonna, and _especially_ not Waverly.

“I do not!” Waverly turns to Nicole and pushes out her bottom lip. “Do I distract you?”

 _Yes_ , Nicole thinks.

“No,” Nicole says.

Waverly sticks her tongue out at Wynonna. “See? I don’t distract her. You, though. You’re going to start talking about cars and music and _poof!_ There goes Nicole and Wynonna, off to look at that dumb car again.”

Nicole frowns. “You think my car is dumb?”

“It’s not your car,” Wynonna and Waverly say at the same time.

“Yet,” Waverly adds kindly.

Nicole leans back in her seat again. “Soon,” she says firmly. “Just, like, two more weeks of mowing, and then it’s all mine.” She stretches her hands out in front of her, looking at Wynonna. “Imagine it. Highway 63. A good tape in the deck. Maybe _Knee Deep in the Hoopla_. Cans of Crush in a cooler in the back. Nowhere to be, but everywhere to go. Just a big open road, and that Pontiac Bonneville gassed up.”

Wynonna takes a long sip from her soda. “You’re drooling again.”

Nicole snaps her mouth shut.

“Don’t listen to her.” Waverly glares at Wynonna. “I think it’s cute.”

“ _Cute_ ,” Nicole repeats. “You think it’s _cute_?”

Wynonna sighs. “Here we go.”

Nicole ignores her. “It’s _clutch_ . It’s _aces_ . It’s _bitchin’_. It’s-”

The screen door swings open behind them. “Are you three going to sit on your asses all day, or are you going to get some work done?” Gus asks.

Nicole jumps up out of her chair. “I was just taking a break.”

Gus narrows her eyes, taking in Nicole before she looks at the lawn critically. “Getting a little close to those flowers, aren’t you? Wouldn’t want a repeat of the last time you mowed them down.”

“Of course not,” Nicole says quickly.

Wynonna snorts and grabs the hem of Nicole’s 1992 Rush/White Wolf tour cutoff, pulling her back down into her seat. “She’s taking a break, not the whole day off.” She ignores when Gus glares at her. “It’s called _child labor_ , you know.”

Nicole ignores Wynonna. “I’ll finish it real soon.” She holds up her can of Crush. “Just wanted to finish this.”

“She’s almost done with it,” Waverly adds.

Gus softens a little. “Well, don’t take too long of a break. I know how you three are when you’re ‘taking a break’ from something. Next thing you know, it’s the morning of a project and _this one_ ,” she says, pointing to Wynonna, “hasn’t done anything for it.”

“Nicole has, though,” Wynonna says lazily. “She’s the brains of the operation.”

“And the brawn.” Waverly shrugs a shoulder when Wynonna sticks a tongue out at her. 

Nicole’s stomach flops. “You think?”

Waverly’s eyes drop from Nicole’s face to her shoulders. Her skin prickles as Waverly’s eyes move down over her arms. She’s been pushing a lawnmower all summer and the summer before this one. She knows she’s been building muscles in her arms. She can carry three cases of Orange Crush in one trip now. She can lift the Snapper onto the trailer attached to her bike easily. She can haul garden hoses across lawns like they’re nothing. Her t-shirts are a little tighter when she rolls them now. And as Waverly’s eyes move across them, Nicole feels something close to pride bubble up in her chest. It washes away with the hopelessness that builds steadily in her stomach, the stuff that makes her rub at the back of her neck and look away.

“Totes,” Waverly finally says.

Wynonna gags. “Okay, she’s buff or whatever now.” She puts her feet up on the small cooler Waverly carries from mowing job to mowing job, always stocked with Crush. “So what?”

Gus sighs. “Just don’t take too long. I need my waitress on time for her shift tonight, and she won’t be if she’s still following you around watching you mow lawns.”

Nicole feels her face flush. “Got it.”

“I know you do, girl.” Gus pats her on the shoulder as she walks by toward her 1979 Ford Fairmont station wagon in the driveway. “And stay out of my fridge, Wynonna Earp. I won’t have you eating all my roast beef.”

Wynonna rolls her eyes. “As if she can’t just buy more.” She scowls when Nicole knocks her feet off the cooler and out of the way. “Come on. I’m tired.”

“From what?” Waverly mutters.

“For upholding the family name,” Wynonna spits back. “Since you’re out there talking to _Champ Hardy_.”

Waverly’s face goes pink. Nicole’s stomach tightens again.

“Nope. You can’t hide anything from me,” Wynonna continues. “I’m like Columbo.”

Nicole snorts. “You’re _not_ like Columbo.”

“Well, we can’t all be rollers, can we?” Wynonna reaches for Nicole’s Hitachi radio. “What _is_ this crap? _Heart_?”

Waverly tries to take the radio out of Wynonna’s hands and misses. “Wynonna, _don’t_. You’re going to tear the ribbon.”

Wynonna rolls her eyes. “ _You’re gonna tear the ribbon_ ,” she mocks. She looks at Nicole. “You let her listen to this _crap_? What’re you? A sucker?”

Nicole opens her mouth to defend Waverly, but she kind of agrees with Wynonna. Heart is… An acquired taste. That’s what she told Waverly and Chrissy last summer. But there are some songs she likes, she guesses. If someone asked her at gunpoint. 

Waverly slumps back in her seat. “Why do you have to ruin everything, Wynonna?”

Nicole watches something flash in Wynonna’s eyes, but it’s gone just as quickly as it came. She snorts and rolls her eyes carelessly, opening the cooler and pulling out one of Nicole’s Crush cans. Nicole opens her mouth to tell her to put it back, but Wynonna has already pulled the tab and drained half of it. Nicole sighs and sits back down. 

Waverly pats her on the arm, hand lingering for just a moment.

“So what’re we doing tonight?” Wynonna burps. “I was thinking we could hit Shorty’s with Doc? They just put in that Bloody Roller pinball game we can try out. I bet I can beat you.”

“You suck at pinball,” Nicole reminds her. “And anyway, I’m going to the Patch.”

Wynonna rolls her eyes. “ _Of course_ you’re going to the Patch.” She points her finger at Nicole. “You know, you’re supposed to be _my_ friend. But _no_ ,” she says, dragging the word out. “You’re all, ‘Waverly this’ and ‘Waverly that’. It’s totally lame, you know that, right?”

Nicole fumbles a little bit, the back of her neck burning. “I promised Waverly I’d help her close tonight.”

Wynonna heaves a sigh. “Fine. Whatever. We’ll go to the Patch tonight.”

“You weren’t invited,” Waverly points out. “And you’re just going to spend the whole night hogging my good booth, playing tonsil hockey with Doc.”

Wynonna grins. “Probably.”

Nicole takes off her hat and runs her hand through her damp hair. She’ll definitely need a shower before she goes to the Patch tonight. She’s already planning her outfit out in her head. It’s hot, but she’ll still wear her jeans. She just ironed them last night. And she found a 1980 Fleetwood Mac and the Northland Coliseum shirt at the thrift store near the mall in the city. “Rhiannon” is one of Waverly’s favorite songs this summer.

“I’ve got to get back to it,” she says as she puts her hat back on, keeping her hair out of her eyes. “I’ve still got to do La Pierre’s lawn.”

“That bastard,” Wynonna spits.

“He’s the worst,” Waverly says at the same time.

Nicole shrugs. “Well, he’s helping me get my car, so I can hate him after I buy it.” She opens the cooler and drops her empty can into it. There’s one more Crush left, for after she finishes La Pierre’s lawn. Her stomach rumbles. Maybe Waverly will make her a fluffernutter while she finishes Gus’s lawn, and she can eat it on the way. She stretches her arms up above her head, one shoulder popping. She swears she can feel Waverly’s eyes on her again, but she shakes it off just as quickly. _Yeah, right_ , she thinks. _Like she’d be looking at me_.

Wynonna puts her feet up in Nicole’s empty chair. “Well, get on with it, you noob. We can’t wait all day for you, you know.”

Nicole glances at Waverly and thinks that she’d wait a whole lifetime for her. Waverly tips her head and smiles.

“Right,” Nicole says. “Right, I’m on it.”

“Chop, chop.” Wynonna pops Heart out of the Hitachi and fishes into her pocket, pulling out a tape. 

Nicole pulls the starter cord on her Snapper as Metallica’s “Battery” starts up. She looks at Waverly out of the corner of her eye as she pushes it through the high grass and she smiles to herself.

-

“This article says that the perfect woman doesn’t exist.” Waverly looks up from the Cosmopolitan magazine she’s reading. “What do you think?”

Nicole thinks about it for a minute. Maybe the perfect woman doesn’t exist. But Waverly comes pretty damn close. She shrugs. “I guess so?”

Waverly sighs. “I need more to work with, Nicole.” She looks back down at the magazine. “If we’re going to find you a girlfriend, we need to find the perfect one.”

Sammy Hagar’s “Two Sides of Love” starts on the jukebox.

Nicole echoes Waverly’s sigh. “I told you, I-”

“Don’t want a girlfriend,” Waverly finishes. “You keep saying that. But I _know_ you want a girlfriend.”

“How do you know that?” Nicole takes a deep breath and tries again. “I haven’t said I want a girlfriend,” she reminds Waverly.

“ _Everyone_ wants a girlfriend.” Waverly pauses and looks back down at the magazine she’s holding. “Well, except, like, Wynonna. And-and me, of course.”

Nicole’s heart sinks a little in her chest. “Right.”

Waverly still doesn’t look up at her. “So, we just need to figure out what you want.”

“I don’t want _anyone_ ,” Nicole says to herself. She spins on the stool, her feet dangling above the ground. “Can’t we do something else? Don’t you need to sweep, or something?”

Waverly looks up at the clock. “It’s not closing time.”

Nicole swings an arm across the dining room. “There’s no one here. Everyone is probably at Shorty’s, or something.” Wynonna didn’t make her choose this week, going on a date with Doc instead. Nicole shudders at the idea. They’re probably up at Lover’s Lane, rounding 3rd base or something.

“Chrissy and Rosita went to Shorty’s. They’re going to come by.” Waverly puts down the magazine, leaning forward with her chin in her hands.

Nicole swallows, her throat suddenly dry. She hasn’t seen Chrissy since last week. She isn’t sure what she would have said to her, even if she did. She can still feel Chrissy’s hand at the back of her neck. She can still smell Chrissy’s tropical lip balm. Every time she thinks about it, her heart pounds hard in her chest and her ears start to burn. 

“Chrissy,” she says weakly. “Oh.”

Waverly narrows her eyes, studying Nicole’s face. “Yeah. Chrissy.”

“Cool,” Nicole says. “Cool. Bitchin’.”

“Bitchin’,” Waverly repeats.

Nicole forces a smile. It’ll be fine, she tells herself. Chrissy definitely moved on, right? Nicole has. She definitely has. She definitely hasn’t spent every night going over Chrissy trying to kiss her in the Nedley’s kitchen.

 _It’s not like I like her_ , she thinks. _It’s not like I want to date her_. It’s just that she’s a little embarrassed. And confused. She’s flattered, maybe? But mostly, she’s confused.

Did she somehow let Chrissy know she should kiss her? Did she send off a signal or say something or smile some kind of way? She knows that Chrissy was giving her a hard time last summer, asking Nicole to put lotion on her back. And she’s been swimming in the pool or in her bathing suit every time that Nicole came over to mow the lawn. Should Nicole have said no to the Orange Crush she offered her? Was that a clue she missed?

She feels bad, too. Chrissy said she wasn’t upset, but she also didn’t get back in the pool or stay outside. She went upstairs for a long time and when she came back down, she threw Nicole a quick wave and hopped on her bike, pedaling down the driveway. Nicole left Sheriff Nedley’s receipt in the door, instead of Chrissy giving her the CA$20 like she usually does. She had loaded the Snapper onto the trailer and biked slowly back home, wondering what she did and how to apologize to Chrissy for not wanting to kiss her back.

“Are you okay?” Waverly asks.

Nicole blinks. “What? Me? Yeah. Totally. For sure.”

Waverly tips her head to the side, frowning. “Okay,” she says slowly. Her fingers gloss across the top of the Cosmopolitan. “So you can either talk to me about it. Or you can talk to me and Chrissy and Rosita.”

Nicole’s eyes widen. She doesn’t want to talk about her perfect woman with Chrissy and Rosita. Especially not Chrissy.

Waverly grins. “That’s what I thought.” She pulls out her pad, flipping to a blank page. She pauses, the tip of her pen on the page. “So. Go.”

Nicole shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t know, Waves.”

Waverly shakes her head. “Well. Blond, black, brunette, redhead, or-or there’s _purple_ or _pink_ or-”

“Something natural,” Nicole says loudly, cutting Waverly off. She lowers her voice. “Something… you know. Natural. ”

“So blond, black, brunette, redhead,” Waverly says, scribbling that down on her pad. “That’s _really_ specific, Nicole.”

Nicole makes a face. “Hair color doesn’t really, like, matter to me.”

“Me, either,” Waverly says decisively. “I mean, Corey Feldman is a babe. But so is River Phoenix.”

 _But no redheads_ , Nicole thinks. She forces a smile. “I guess if you’re into guys like River Phoenix,” she says. She shrugs a shoulder.

Waverly rolls her eyes. “We can’t all save ourselves for Alyssa Milano.”

Nicole smiles wide. “No, but I can.”

Something flashes in Waverly’s eyes, the same thing she’s seen every time Wynonna teases Nicole for her crush on Alyssa Milano. It comes and it goes so quickly that Nicole doesn’t know what it is. She can’t even think of anything. Alyssa Milano has nothing on Waverly Earp. But Nicole can’t say that. She would never say that. She’d rather step into the middle of a race at the Triangle and let Jonas Adams run her down before she ever admitted that.

 _Whatever_ , she tells herself. Everyone has always said she’s dramatic.

The door opens with a gust, and Nicole turns quickly, angling herself in front of Waverly. She sighs when she realizes it’s just Wynonna taking advantage of the summer windstorm to make an entrance.

“What’s up, hosers?”

Nicole’s eyes widen. She does not want Wynonna here for this. 

“We’re figuring out who Nicole’s perfect woman is.”

Wynonna glides across the floor in her Altama boots. “It’s me, duh.”

“Let’s see,” Waverly continues, ignoring Wynonna. “So hair color is anything. Eyes?”

Nicole spares a glance at Wynonna. “Uh, normal?”

Waverly pokes her tongue out from between her lips. “Mouth shape?”

Heart comes back on. Nicole can’t escape it. Waverly has been playing it all summer, and she keeps frontloading the jukebox every night. Nicole can sing the whole _Bad Animal_ tape in her head. She does, some nights, when she can’t sleep because she keeps thinking about Chrissy trying to kiss her and wishing it was Waverly instead. 

Nicole looks at Waverly’s mouth and swallows. “People care about that sort of thing?”

“Some people.” Waverly shrugs. 

“I do,” Wynonna says. She climbs onto the stool next to Nicole, spinning so her feet Nicole can feel them knock into her legs. 

“But not you, obviously,” Waverly finishes.

“Obviously,” Nicole echoes, finally looking away from Waverly’s bottom lip. “I don’t care about hand size or shoe size or anything else weird that you’re going to ask about.”

Waverly pouts, and Nicole looks over her shoulder at the neon light flashing behind her. This one is red, and it catches strands of Waverly’s hair, lighting them up. It dances across her cheeks, and Nicole’s hand flexes where she’s resting it against her thigh, everything in her wanting to reach up and see if she can brush the light away. Heart’s “Alone” fades in, and she watches Waverly’s mouth move along to the words. 

“What about personality?” Waverly asks.

Nicole shrugs. “I don’t know. Nice? Kind? Caring?”

Waverly just stares at her. “Those all mean the same thing.”

“Yeah,” Wynonna adds. “They all mean _lame_.”

Nicole sighs. “I don’t know, Waves. Someone…” She trails off, her fingernail drifting across her thumb. She catches herself and squeezes her hand into a fist instead. “Someone… Smart. And yeah, someone kind. Someone _clutch_. Who I can laugh with and listen to music with. Who doesn’t mind going for drives or to Shorty’s or just, like, hanging out at my favorite places.” She rubs at the back of her neck. “Someone who makes me fluffernutter sandwiches and remembers that I like Orange Crush and who doesn’t laugh because spiders creep me out. Who doesn’t care that I roll my sleeves every day or I iron my jeans. Someone who likes me for all the things that make me… me.”

Waverly looks at her for a long moment, smiling softly “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Nicole breathes. 

Wynonna snorts. “That sounds a lot like Waverly. Which is lame, because she’s the _worst_ ,” she sings.

Nicole flinches. “Uh, no. It definitely doesn’t.”

“It definitely does.” Wynonna grabs the pad from Waverly’s hand and frowns at it. “You’re not even asking the right questions. Like, what do you do on a first date? Round first base? Knock out a homerun?”

Waverly ignores her, something passing over her face. “So what about Samantha Baker?”

Nicole’s mouth drops. “Perky Tits?”

Waverly slaps at her wrist. “Don’t call her that.”

“Wynonna does.” 

“I do,” Wynonna agrees. “And with good reason.” She wiggles her eyebrows at Nicole.

Nicole glances away at the look Waverly gives her. “Fine. _Samantha Baker_ . Definitely not. Besides, she’s, like, super into _boys_.”

Waverly scribbles something down. “So no one unattainable.”

Nicole watches the way Waverly keeps writing on her pad, crossing things out and underlining others. She watches the way her hand moves, the way she holds the pen. She watches the way her tongue pokes out just a little as she concentrates, and the small wrinkle she gets between her eyes. Nicole catalogs each of these things the way she always has, filing them away for later. 

“Oh!”

Nicole startles. “What?”

“So, we just need to find out who likes girls, right?” Waverly starts writing furiously and then pauses. “Wait. How do we do that?”

Nicole’s shoulders drop. “How am I supposed to know?”

Waverly frowns. “Don’t you just… I don’t know. Know?”

“No?” Nicole waves a hand in the air uselessly. “Shae just… I don’t know.”

“Shae,” Wynonna sighs. “I wonder how good ole First Girlfriend is doing these days.”

Waverly’s smile flickers. “Shae.”

Nicole sighs. “Waverly.”

“It’s cool, it’s cool,” Waverly says, her smile brightening again. “Shae was nice. I always thought Shae was nice.”

“You did not always think Shae was nice.” Nicole’s hand flutters at her side before she drops it over Waverly’s on the countertop. “But we’re past that, right?”

“For sure.” Waverly turns her hand over and tangles her fingers in Nicole’s, squeezing. “But don’t think you’re going to get out of this that quickly.”

Nicole’s head drops. “Of course not.”

“So, like, think of all the girls you know. Like…” Waverly takes her hand back, picking up her pen again. “I don’t know. Chrissy,” she says, looking back down at her notepad.”

Nicole can feel the back of her neck go red. “Chrissy,” she repeats faintly.

Wynonna’s head snaps up from where she’s drawing on her arm with Waverly’s second pen. “ _Chrissy_.”

Waverly hums. “She totally had a thing for you last summer.”

“What?” Wynonna gasps.

 _And last week_ , Nicole wants to add. But her throat closes up, and she knows her ears are starting to turn red. 

Waverly doesn’t seem to notice. “I mean, I wasn’t imagining that.”

Nicole coughs.

Waverly looks up. “Oh my god, you liked her, too!”

Wynonna gasps again. “What?”

“No,” Nicole says quickly. She scowls at Wynonna. “ _No_. I told you, Waverly. I’m not interested in her.”

Waverly looks at her for a long moment, eyes roaming Nicole’s face before they drop to her arms and back up again. “Okay,” she finally says. “So, then, who? Not Chrissy. Not Samantha Baker. Stephanie Jones?” Her eyes widen. “Is it Mercedes?

Nicole groans. “Waverly, stop it.”

“Oh, come on.” Waverly leans closer. “I just want to know who it is. Mercedes is all over you all the time. She calls you _Loverboy_.”

Wynonna drops her chin into her hand, propping it up on the counter. “Mercedes would eat you alive, 5-0. We can’t have that. Who’ll protect Purgatory from the face-stealers roaming around?”

Nicole rolls her eyes. “I’m telling you, Wynonna. No one stole Ms. Clootie’s face.”

“Tell that to her face.” Wynonna shrugs. “Which looks twenty years younger, by the way.”

“So Mercedes is a possibility,” Waverly continues. She writes something down on her pad. “I mean, she’s clutch, I guess. Very Valley Girl, which is not something I thought you’d be interested in, but…” Waverly shrugs. “If that’s what you like.”

“I don’t _like_ Mercedes Gardner, Waverly.”

“I said it was fine if you do.”

“I _don’t_.”

Wynonna pokes Nicole in the forehead. “You’re red, Red.”

Nicole feels a flash of anger flare in her chest. “I said I didn’t want to do this.”

Waverly pauses and puts her pen down. “Sorry. We don’t have to.”

“Good,” Nicole says shortly. She takes a deep breath. “Listen. I just don’t want to have a girlfriend right now. Senior year is starting in a few weeks. I just want to… I don’t know. Get my car and have a totally clutch last year of high school. I’ve got more important things to focus on than having a girlfriend.”

 _Like you_ , she thinks. 

Waverly flips the cover of her notepad over and pushes it away from her. Wynonna goes to pick it up but Waverly smacks it out of her hand. “Okay,” she says softly.

Wynonna looks between the two of them before she sighs heavily. “This is lame-o-rama. I’m going to go get some fries.” Her boots hit the ground with a thud and a squeak. The kitchen doors swing shut behind her.

Nicole takes in another deep breath. “Sorry,” she says quietly.

Waverly’s mouth twitches. “I pushed it. I just… I want you to be happy, you know?”

Nicole reaches out and takes Waverly’s hand, holding it loosely. “I’m happy. I don’t need to be any happier than this. Okay?”

“Okay,” Waverly says quietly.

The bell above the door rings and Nicole looks up, her stomach dropping out.

Chrissy and Rosita stumble in together, laughing at something. Waverly brightens up, her hand slipping out from Nicole’s as she rounds the corner and meets them halfway. Rosita pulls Waverly toward her, across the room. Nicole swallows hard as Chrissy lingers in the middle of the diner, toeing the ground. She sways back and forth for a moment before she slides across the room and hesitates at Nicole’s side. 

“Hi,” Chrissy says quietly.

Nicole smiles despite the butterflies in her stomach. “Hey.”

Chrissy looks across the room to where Rosita and Waverly are huddled around the jukebox, punching songs into the queue. Nicole rolls her eyes. It’s going to be a lot of Madonna and Belinda Carlisle. It makes Nicole’s ears bleed. Chrissy looks back at her, a small smile on her face.

“Chrissy, I-”

“About the other day-”

Nicole pauses. “Go ahead.”

Chrissy takes a deep breath. “I’m _so_ sorry,” she says. “I just kind of, like, sprung that on you.”

“No, _I’m_ sorry,” Nicole interrupts.

Chrissy’s mouth twitches. “For what? You were totally mondo about everything.”

“Mondo,” Nicole repeats.

“Everyone says it,” Chrissy defends. “It doesn’t matter. You were aces about it, even though I, like, jumped you. I know you don’t, you know. Like me like that.”

Nicole smiles sadly. “I’m sorry, Chrissy.”

Chrissy smiles back at her. “Don’t be. You’d be lucky to be with me, anyway. I’m a total catch.” She shimmies a shoulder. “Besides. We both know I’m not exactly who you’re looking to be with.” Her eyes drift across the room to the jukebox.

“Uh, what?” Nicole rubs at the back of her neck again, feeling the skin burn against her hand. “I don’t- I...”

Chrissy takes her hand, squeezing it gently. “Nicole, you’re like a giant neon light. Like a big, bright, brand new neon light”

Nicole’s eyes stray to Waverly. “No, I’m not,” she says weakly.

“You are.” Chrissy squeezes her hand again. “But don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.” She smiles and sways in, her shoulder bumping against Nicole’s.

“So Nicole doesn’t have a perfect woman,” Waverly says loudly. She meets Nicole’s eyes and immediately looks away.

Chrissy’s hand drops from Nicole’s, falling back to her side.

Rosita gasps. “You don’t? I thought you were in love with Alyssa Milano?” She shimmies her way across the white-and-black tiled floor. “Finally realize she’s totally unattainable?” She looks around. “What? I’m _smart_.”

“You don’t blow that many things up without being smart,” Nicole agrees. She leans back on the stool, the counter cutting through her t-shirt. “And now, I guess not even Alyssa Milano can live up to my _impossible_ standards.”

“You are impossible,” Waverly agrees.

“Uh, she’s right.” Chrissy holds a hand up in defense. “I’m sorry, you are. But it’s fine. You’re totally diesel.”

“Diesel,” Nicole repeats. “That’s not really a thing.”

Rosita walks her fingers up Nicole’s arm. “It is and you are.” 

“You are not,” Wynonna says, coming out from the kitchen with a basket of fries. “Diesel? More like noob.”

“Diesel. She is,” Rosita says again. Her fingers dip under Nicole’s shirt sleeve. “Must be all that lawn mowing you’re doing these days. Unless ‘lawn mowing’ really means-”

“Mowing lawns,” Nicole says quickly. “It means I push a lawnmower up and down a patch of grass, and I cut it down into piles that I pick up and then I get paid. That’s what it means.”

Rosita laughs, throwing her head back. “Of course it does, Nicole. You’re so cute, did you know that?” She looks at Waverly. “Does she know that?”

Waverly smiles at her softly. “There’s a lot she doesn’t know.”

“I can learn.”

“Yeah,” Waverly says quietly. Her hand falls to Nicole’s knee, her fingertips barely resting on the thick denim of her jeans. “Yeah, I think you can.”


End file.
